The Problem Of Happiness: Life as a plane of suffering

I was just having a conversation in a chat room on life and the problem of happiness and this inspired me to write this post. I said I think life is a plane of suffering, but this was construed as a pessimistic view point. Really it is not, instead the realisation that life is a plane of suffering leads to the realization of liberating oneself from life, what the mystics call self-realization. In this posting I will explain why life is a plane of suffering, why nihilism is a condition we must all go through, the solutions to nihilism, and my philosophy on how nihilism arises from images which construct conditional realities and initiate impossible quests for finding meaning and coherence.

I want you to take a good look around you in the world. About 70% of this world subsists on less than 2 dollars a day, 90% of the children born today are born into abject poverty. Of course some say that it is the poor that are genuinely happy, but I think if you spend a day or two in a third world country and see many miserable unsmiling faces going about their daily tribulations, you will be compelled to disagree with this naive view. Many of in us in the modern industrialized world really do not appreciate how difficult life is for most of humanity, and how difficult life has been since time immemorial. As my lecturer once said to me, "You have not been put on this world to enjoy yourself" Life is not about fun and frolics, it is serious business. Yet many people in the modern age seem to believe life is about enjoying oneself, it is about pursuing ones desires and fulfilling them and to be happy. This is what I call the culture of "entertainment", the culture of entertainment is sacrificing yourself to the the other to be entertained by pleasurable experiences so that you can forget about actual project of life. It is living not life, but a simulation of life. When we are living in the simulation of life, we are not living life, and when we are living life, we are not living the simulation of life.

Modern life is a simulation of life because it is a culture of images. Rather than being active participants and co-creators in life, we allow ourselves to become subjects of an image of life that is presented to us by the world. This can be any image; a religious image, a peer image, an aesthetic image and through this identification we allow our consciousness to become misidentified with that image. We say "I am the image","I am a Christian/Hindu/Muslim", "I am ugly/fat, intelligent/stupid", "I am fashionable/unfashionable" and the image consumes us and defines who we are. Then every moment we spend living is not in life, but the simulation of the image of life. This is what I call Conditional reality.

When consciousness becomes conditioned it moulds itself into a conditional reality and becomes misidentified with it. As soon as the "I" becomes associated with the image, it forms the "I am image" condition and from this begins a whole series of misidentifications e.g. "I am a scientist, scientists are rational, rational means being empirical, empirical means... " and so on and so forth. Eventually we find ourselves caught up in a web of images, images referring to each other to define themselves. This is the subject-predicate net and this is what gives rise to personal identity. But personality identity is not a being in it self, because it is forever changing because of our a quest for being, a quest for finding meaning. When I make my first identification with the image, I subsequently look for meaning for the image, but this project to find meaning is impossible because the very foundation is an error.

The realization of the futility of the project to find meaning and coherent identity is what leads to the condition of nihilism and this is where suffering begins. Sooner or later the human being realises that their existential project is irrational because there is no meaning. But the fundamental contradiction is that the quest for meaning is so fundamental to form a complete personal identity, that the realization of nihilism leads to a state of dissonance and becomes a cause for suffering. This is why many people seek a culture of entertainment, because as long as they are entertained they are kept away from the realisation of nihilism. Unfortunately, entertainment is temporal, as soon as it is over, one has to return to the condition of nihilism. In the end, irrespective of whatever one does in life, everything comes back to nihilism. The feeling of futility, dread, boredom and depression.

Many philosophers have spoken of this condition of nihilism from Krishna to Camus. Krishna famously proclaimed the material world is a plane of suffering, Buddha declared the world as painful/stressful. Schopenhauer called the world a cause of evil. Sartre says existence was illogical, and fellow existentialist peer Camus called life "Absurd"

The condition of nihilism is thus very much a part of us being human and is inescapable. But Nihilism is not acceptable. Nobody really likes pain, boredom, dread, depression. etc None of above philosophers accepted nihilism either, but rather looked for solutions or a way of out of nihilism.

Camus says that life is "Absurd" Life is like rolling up a stone up a sloped hill, knowing that as soon as you take it to the top, it will roll back down. This is a metaphor for all our pursuit of happiness. To attain happiness we set ourselves goals on things that we think will make us happy, then we struggle to attain that goal, experiencing much pain and hardship and if we ever do attain our goal, we realise that we have to start all over again because it did not lead to happiness. I saw this film recently by Will Smith called, "Pursuit of Happiness" The film is based on the real life story of a man who struggle to leave poverty and become rich, and he faces much hardship to attain this goal, but eventually his sheer determination leads him to triumph and he becomes one of the most successful and richest men in the world and the film ends. We are lead to believe that he is now "happy" but what we don't see, which maybe the sequel will show if it ever gets made, that once he became rich and entered the corporate world he was beset with more struggle and hardship and more goals; more pursuits for happiness. Thus the pursuit of happiness can be like chasing a wind.

Camus offers three solutions to the problem of nihilism: physical suicide, philosophical suicide and living for others. The first one is self explanatory, the second one may need some explication for some readers. Philosophical suicide is taking recourse to faith or religion. Rather than facing life, the one who commits philosophical suicide, escapes reality by escaping into a fantasy world. Camus does not endorse neither form of suicide because he considers them cowardice.Rather, Camus's solution is to face life irrespective of its absurdity, and live for "Others" i.e., let us get over ourselves and learn to find fulfillment in the community.

The antithesis of Camus's communal solution to nihilism is Nietzsche's individualist solution, the "will to power" For Nietzsche the community is what stifles the individual and life itself, when it begins to live for the other, it can no longer live for itself, but instead lives to maintain the status-quo of the other. But then there is no progress. There is only progress when an individual breaks free of other by the exertion of the power of their will. The very nature of life is freedom, life riles against oppression of all kinds, fighting to be liberated from it. If you trap an ant under a cup, it will spend the rest of its life trying to get out. Thus the solution of nihilism is the heroic act of exerting ones will over the other. Thus Nietzsche's solution to nihilism is a culture of violence. Not compassion but war; not truth, but power.

The condition of nihilism leads to strife to end the nihilism. Some commit suicide, some sacrifice their individuality for the collective, some project power other others. Some adopt a culture of violence as an outlet to release one from the boredom of the status-quo. Some hide from this boredom and accept a culture of entertainment. In the end whatever solution we adopt to solve the nihilist condition, it seeks only to further amplify the nihilism. Camus's solution was merely accepting defeat, and though he said live for the other, he expressed sentiments of estrangement from others, and Nietzsche, he was driven mad by his unending quest for power. Therefore, the solution does not rely in solving the problem of nihilism, but dissolving the problems of nihilism and thus dissolving the problem of happiness.

First we must understand what has given rise to the nihilism. As described earlier on this arises because of our quest for finding meaning and coherent identity because of our identification with images. Thus to dissolve the problems of nihilism we identify our erroneous identifications with the image and detach ourselves from the image. To strip the subject of all its predicates, leaving only the pure subject or the Absolute reality. The Absolute reality is the unconditioned consciousness. As Sartre argues the powers of negation of consciousness allows it the power to negate any image presented to it. Thus consciousness, or as Sartre calls it, the "for-itself" is the imageless.

We must understand that every image that we have identified with about life is in-itself, it cannot be taken for granted and far as the for-itself -consciousness - is concerned it is just a possibility amongst many possibilities. If consciousness be the screen upon which these images appear, then it can host infinite images, thus no image is sacrosanct. Not even then image of an external world. For in consciousness all that exists are possibilities. It is simply a screen upon which we see images. All images occur in conditional realities are presented within absolute reality, thus can be negated because all conditional reality is based on external assumption. Discover all those assumptions and the source of those assumptions and end the condition of nihilism.

In my next post I will discuss my philosophy of why there is a conditional reality at all, how external assumptions shape it, and how these external assumptions arise from ones intentionality.